Six Times Nami Wanted Her World to Change
by ajremix
Summary: And one time it did. Moments where Nami wanted to break. Spoilers for the Arlong arc and rated for talks of death. Yes. There is death in One Piece.


An old introspective Nami piece I'm putting up now just because. Spoilers to near the end of the Arlong Arc which everyone should be passed anyway. Italicized lines are from various Silent Hill songs.

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Six Times Nami Wanted Her World to Changed and One Time it did

_Here's a lullaby to close your eyes_

The hand on her shoulder was rough and surprisingly dry. The one that tilted her head back, though, made her skin crawl.

"It's to be expected." Arlong's voice, even when he spoke quietly, boomed in her head. She couldn't get away from his voice, it snuck into the crevices of her brain and sunk in deep, clawing as it took root, tearing apart the foundations of her childhood like ivy in brick. "Everyone hates pirates. Now that you're one the townspeople and your sister would hate you, too."

She didn't want their hate, but she knew she deserved it. She tossed her lot in with the pirates that killed Bellemere-san- her mother –and she was going to draw them maps. She deserved the scorn of the villagers and the doctor and even Gen-san. But she couldn't take Nojiko hating her. Not the only family she had left.

Arlong didn't seem to notice Nami's silence or he didn't care and just went on talking until his voice stained her mind in a swirled tattoo. "Never mind that, Princess. A pirate is expected to get into fights. Consider it a full, official welcome to the crew." He laughed and Nami could smell the sea and liquor and the stink of fish on his breath. "Just think! Tomorrow will be the first day of your new life! I'll have my crew bring up all our navigational and cartography books to your room. Once you've gone through those you can start mapping out my empire with this island." There were razors in his teeth and his jagged nose framed the superior gaze down at her. "You'll record every hill on the island, every crag on the coast. You'll draw the depths of the shallows and drop off and how the currents and weather changes from month to month." Though he grinned it look more like he was snarling. "I will accept nothing but perfection. Never forget that I own you, little girl."

He laughed again as he left and it was always the last thing she heard when she'd huddle in her bed.

_I'll wait forever for you_

"Ne, Bellemere-san," Nami's light and breezy tone was the antithesis of the situation with quick fingers snatching up bits of coin to the sound of battle on the decks above, "would you be proud of me?"

"You're going to get caught." The blank wall replied. "And hurt."

"I've been caught." She moved on to the necklaces that looked like it was strung with genuine mother-of-pearls. "And hurt. But I always get back up again."

"Just because I taught you girls never to lay down didn't mean I wanted you to go out looking for trouble."

This time her tone was sharper. "It has to be done, Bellemere-san. And I have to be the one to do it."

"Yeah. Alone. Just like you always do it."

For a brief moment Nami's hand paused. "They'd never allow Nojiko to come with me. And I could never make her a thief."

"She wouldn't need you to. She'd do it because she had to. For you and everyone. Just like you did."

"That's why I have to do this alone."

"Nami." The voice sighed and Nami didn't know if it was out of disappointment or knowing the argument was lost. "Asking for help isn't a weakness. If you find others that genuinely care, don't be afraid of them. People are naturally stronger together. Just like you and Nojiko made me stronger. Never forget this."

"I won't, Bellemere-san. I won't forget anything about you." But the wall had already stopped listening.

_I need a miracle and not someone's charity_

There were so many times out at sea and on land that someone wanted Nami to sail away with them. Not like she'd been doing for so many years but to leave with them forever. Forget everything and just up and leave and move forward and care about nothing else. She'd blush and smile and laugh and said she'd love to but she just had too many other obligations right now. Sometimes, if they had too much money and were too much of a sap she'd tell them a story about how she had to go back home every few months because her mother/father/siblings were sickly and she wanted to help them as best she could with the hard earned money she garnered doing work at various ships and ports (and those that she stole from).

Once she told a big, burly pirate smitten with her (and followed her even after she robbed him so thoroughly the only rings he was down to was the pale bands on suntanned fingers) that she couldn't leave. Her father would beat her mother if she didn't return and if she came back too late she'd get beaten too. The pirate- drunk off liquor and love –said he'd sail her back to her home and show her father that was no way to treat women and then, once the man was properly flogged and repentant, Nami could sail the world with him.

She hated him. She'd known him long enough to see how he pawed over women even as he told Nami his heart was locked to hers and how he'd pillaged and broke apart families all the while saying how valiant and merciful his crew was. She had told him if he wanted her that badly, then perhaps he should go and beat her 'father'.

"Go on!" She egged him, angrier and angrier and her mind a litany of disgust for this man, this pirate and every single one of his kind. "Throw away your life! At least then you'd be doing it for a better cause than simple greed and ignorance! But you're too lazy and stupid to care, aren't you? If you knew what you were getting into you wouldn't give me a second thought. Even with all the 'love' and 'devotion' you've been throwing at me from the moment I set foot on you damned ship you'd turn right back around and forget I even existed if you knew what was in store for you! You're all the same- only caring about yourselves and never about the people you step on! So lazy and stupid and greedy, you'd be doing the world a favor killing yourselves!"

At first the man had turned red, teeth grinding and eyes narrowed. But something of Nami's despise must've come through in her words or her look because he suddenly became very pale and when she had finished lashing him, he lowered his head and kindly asked her to leave.

Nami didn't say anything more as she stepped off the ship, just stopped long enough to grab her things. And before she left port, she wired a message to a local Marine post about a suspicious looking ship anchored in an alcove along the coast.

_Not again, not again, not again, this dream I can't awake_

Stepping back into Cocoyashi Nami made her way to the house behind the mikan grove. Along the way she gave every villager the cold smile she'd perfected in the mirror (among others she'd perfected: shy, seductive, cheerful) just to remind them that she was Arlong's crew and not their little Na-chan. Watching the returned scowls whenever there wasn't a back, she knew she was doing this more to remind herself. So long as Arlong was here she could never be happy or allow herself to be.

A pirate couldn't be happy without their treasure, she thought ironically.

But she was still as in tune to the mood of the town as she was to the changing climate and there was something oppressive- even where life was a daily grind of fear –that draped over everyone. Nami reigned her anxiety and the only hint of the terrible thoughts that began to cloud her mind was the way her strides quickened half a step as she moved from the village to the outskirts.

Nojiko was tending the grove, pruning a line of trees, critically eyeing the branches for any sick or dying branches. Even though Nami stepped invisibly, Nojiko knew the soundless movements of her sister. "Welcome back." She said, peering at a small cluster of discolored leaves. With a handful of precise snips, she severed them from the main branch. "You've been to the village, I take it?"

Stopping at Nojiko's shoulder Nami watched her sun-dark hands move without seeing them. "What happened?" Nami asked, trying not to sound apprehensive. But she failed, unable to hide anything from Nojiko- unwilling to do so.

"A couple of kids from a village on the north side tried to build an escape ship." Though she never paused in her work, Nojiko's voice was hard underneath. "Arlong's crew nearly beat them to death. But he let them live, said he was being 'merciful' because they were just some pre-teens." With a snip that somehow seemed too final for Nami's ears, Nojiko's arm dropped. "Killed their parents instead. Because they didn't teach their children right."

Nami's fists tightened around her skirt. She bit her lips tight and willed herself not to be sick.

_Over and over I feel it breaking me down_

Sometimes, when she didn't work herself to exhaustion or didn't steal anything worthwhile, Nami dreamed. Sometimes she dreamed of that day, replayed over and over in her head. She'd watch the way Arlong towered over her and Nojiko and Bellemere-san and she'd watch the way Bellemere-san's blood shot out of her body and blossomed across the grass. She'd watch the way the mermen beat the villagers and how Gen-san's sword shook in a hand slick bright with blood. Sometimes she watched it all like a child, sometimes through grown eyes but she could never change what happened.

Sometimes when she dreamed, it was of other nightmares. Coming back to hear some other village was destroyed because they couldn't make the payments or someone killed because they broke and did something the mermen didn't like. Sometimes it was of things that didn't happen or fears that breed deep in her mind. Sometimes she'd dream of Cocoyashi being destroyed, finding Gen-san and Doctor and bodies almost too mangled to be identified but she still knew who they were as they sprawled out on the street. Nojiko would be at Bellemere-san's house, sometimes inside, sometimes in the grove and Nami would wake up feeling sick.

The worst was when Nami would dream about another life. She saw herself growing up with Nojiko and Bellemere-san and they were happy. The older the girls got, the more they could help with the mikan farm and the more money they got. And whenever they couldn't help there, they'd do odd jobs in the village. The older the girls got they began to understand that when Bellemere-san laughed at Gen-san, it wasn't just to watch him stammer. The older she got, Bellemere-san would tell Nami more about the Marines, explaining how they had an entire branch devoted to just cartography and Nami would wish she could grow up faster so she could join them. In these dreams Nojiko's expression didn't have that hard, stern line to it, Gen-san's skin wasn't a patchwork of failure, the villagers didn't have the haunted look in their eyes. In these dreams Nami was happy and when she woke up she knew it was only a dream and none of these things could ever happen.

These dreams were the worst because she'd wake up and she'd almost break her vow to never cry again. She'd curl up deep and hold the wound deep in her belly and shackle each shudder until they settled and she could trust herself to breathe without choking. She didn't deserve to be happy. Not even in dreams.

Not yet.

_Ten years ago your past self prayed for your happiness, please don't lose hope_

It was her birthday today. Eight years since Arlong came and destroyed the world as she knew it and Nami spent most of the day 'celebrating' it with his crew. It was the first time she'd celebrated it in so long that if Nojiko hadn't greeted her every time she came back with a 'congratulations on being a year older!' she could've forgotten completely about it.

Arlong made sure none of the gifts given to Nami could be traded in for any vast amount of money, even added up. It was mostly clothing and books, some new cartography tools and the most expensive thing that Nami could've sold was a new compass with a barometer built inside it. Even though she could've gotten maybe a couple hundred berri with it if she bartered hard enough, Nami needed it too much. And Arlong knew that.

She hated him for knowing that. Just like she hated him for making her stay for her party. _Her_ party. The words even felt like poison when she thought them. She sat there with a brittle smile, looking through the mermen as they laughed and drank and wrestled together and she thanked everyone one of them for their useless gifts and when they wished her a happy birthday she wished them a brutal death.

The only thing she was grateful for on her birthday was when she slipped away and found the mikan grove and her home in the dark. Nojiko had long gone to sleep judging from the state of the house and on Nami's bed was a small, flat rectangle wrapped in plain butcher paper. It was a picture frame with the one photo of her and Nojiko and Bellemere-san. Nojiko, Nami guessed, found someone to finally replicate that picture.

She sat on the edge of her bed, running her hand over the sides of the smooth wood. The frame was plain and unadorned, but it was more than anything Nami could've asked for. She didn't shed tears over the present that she was both glad and sorry for because she curled into the corner and pressed the frame to her chest, her heart crying directly into it.

_Never felt so lonely then you came around_

She barely felt the pain in her arm and that just made her angrier. She stabbed for every time she dreamt of Bellemere-san's death, for every night she woke up crying from fear of the mermen, for every time she had to leave home and wonder if anyone was going to die and for every time she wanted to just give up but knew she couldn't because of _that man_.

He killed her mother and she hated him. He shoved the people she loved into a merciless servitude and she hated him. She wasted eight years of her life, he had other villages destroyed and people killed, he made every soul on this island live in fear, he broke his word and Nojiko was shot, all the villagers were charging off to die at his hands and she hated it, hated him, hated him, _hated him, hate, hate, hatehatehatehateHATE_-

The knife kept falling and Nami kept screaming but she still couldn't feel it carving that terrible mark that she wanted to scratch at until all the skin came off because he had invaded her home and her life and her mind and his laughter and haughty eyes burned behind her tears and she didn't feel like she could ever come clean of him-

The hand that caught hers was rough and surprisingly dry. It was also warm and gentle beneath its strength. Surprised Nami looked back up at Luffy. She didn't know why he was here, why he kept following her, why he wanted her back so badly. Even after she stole his entire ship, even when she claimed to have killed Usopp, even when she said she wanted nothing to do with him.

And even when she sat there, screaming at him, sobbing and covered in tears and blood and dirt and her life broken ruins around them, he made no move. Nami gasped into her hand, body shuddering and it was just all too _unfair_.

She didn't deserve this. She tried so hard, made so many sacrifices and in the end it meant nothing. She couldn't do anything. Not by herself.

"Luffy," I don't want to be alone, I want to be free, I want the mermen gone, I want justice, I want to laugh, I want to follow my dream, I don't want them to die, I don't want this to happen, I want to live, "help me."


End file.
